The Daily Background

Late last night a crazy Marxist friend and I were talking about various things, and knowing that my father was born Iranian, he linked me to an interesting entry on some linguistics blog he found. Here’s the short of it:

Back in January, the edict came down in Tehran that Danish pastries (shirini danmarki) should henceforth be called “roses of Mohammad” (gul-e-muhammadi). At the time, this seemed to be a specific reaction to the Danish cartoon controversy; but it seems that the Farhangestan — Iran’s equivalent of the Academie Française — has a much longer hit list, including pizza (now to become “elastic loaf”) and helicopter (now to be “rotating wing”), and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has decreed that the changes should be mandatory for official documents, schoolbooks and newspapers.

I responded that it struck me as a particularly illustrative example of the similarities between some of the right-wing ideologues in power in Iran, and some of the right-wing ideologues in power here in the United States.

Apparently for political reasons in Iran, the government issued a decree that pizza shall now be known in official documents and newspapers as “elastic loaf.” Never mind how often the word pizza is used in official documents, but this petty sentiment is hardly an isolated incident.

Take for example the measure taken by Republican Representative Bob Ney the American House of Representatives declared in 2003 that “French Fries” would be renamed as “Freedom Fries” in the House of Representatives cafeteria. He was able to do so without a House vote because of his position as Chairman on the Committee on House Administration. Wikipedia has the full story.

I was in high school at the time this happened, and I remember our school cafeteria manager decided to change the name of our french fries to “freedom fries” in an apparent move to express solidarity with Representative Ney (who may incidentally find himself indicted in connection with the Jack Abramoff scandal one of these days). The name change never did catch on with the kids though (except in the occasional mocking manner), and the cafeteria manager has since left the school to be replaced with a more liberal guy who is a bigger fan of things like salads.

Anyways, just an interesting anecdote I thought I’d share.

Filed under: Iran Related, Z-TDB Blog